


much further out than you thought

by cyclogenesis (addictedkitten)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addictedkitten/pseuds/cyclogenesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Let’s go to the beach,” Ashton says, and just like last night, Calum doesn’t say no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	much further out than you thought

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](https://twitter.com/Ashton5SOS/status/413967183719710720/photo/1). Spun out from a story [Nina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/loafers) and I told each other. Title from this [Stevie Smith poem](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/175778).

Washed blue December summer light stabs Calum right in the eye like the sun fucking hates him and is keen for him to know it. Other things that hate Calum: his liver probably, after last night; his skin, which feels stretched dry by a layer of salt sweat and tequila; his muscles and bones and all the rest of him which has been origamied into this car bed which seemed brilliant at the time when he and Ashton were putting it together. Now it feels like something he’s going to have war flashbacks about. 

There’s a big hand on his waist, warm and squeezing him there, fingertips brushing his hipbone. Familiar. It’s fucking familiar, is what it is, that hand on his bare skin. “I want a McMuffin,” says Ashton, and Calum, lacking the capacity for much else, just grunts in agreement.

-

Greasy food isn’t a cure-all, but it’s a cure-some. Calum’ll take it like he takes the extra napkins Ashton hands over, as if he’s personally offended by Calum licking the hash brown salt from his fingertips. Calum smears his licked-wet fingers over Ashton’s arm to show him what’s what and Ashton recoils and wrinkles his nose and bats at him and says “Get your filthy hands off me,” and Calum says -

“That’s not what you said last night.”

\- and, well, then. Then they’re quiet.

-

But Ashton doesn’t take him home. They get back in the car and the bed’s in the back and Calum thinks if he smells the weird slightly musty kept in the cupboard scent of the blanket they were lying on again he’ll be sick. Even thinking about it makes him queasy. He taps three fingers against his stomach to try and settle it down and Ashton taps his own fingers against the steering wheel and Calum stares at those fingers like they’re a separate thing that have touched him of their own accord and Ashton had nothing to do with it at all and Calum’s stomach roils and he doesn’t look away from them and the sun is so _fucking bright_ , it’s. It’s fucked up. In the side view mirror Calum sees a dark hickey peeking out from the collar of his shirt. Maybe he’ll pretend he got in a fight.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Ashton says, and just like last night, Calum doesn’t say no.

-

The sun’s hot and the water’s cool and maybe that makes it all fine. They’re at what’s sort of default become their spot at this beach, parking in the same lot, heading silently for the soft stretch of sand where the waves crush shells and pebbles into even more sand and sometimes Calum can find tiny shells in good shape there, little snail swirls and sand dollars with barely perceptible stars in the middle. He brings them home for Mali and she puts them in glass jars on her windowsill. Sometimes Ashton finds them for her too.

Ashton shakes out his beach towel and it ruffles in the wind and Calum watches his shoulders move, the shift of muscles under golden skin, the breeze making his curls get in his eyes so he sputters and shakes his head like a dog. Calum curls his hands into fists at his sides because his hands want to do things his brain’s telling them not to do and it’s stupid that body parts should argue with each other and stupid that he’s pretending he doesn’t know exactly what he wants. The ocean air sends sand skittering across his toes like it’s flirting with him. He drops his towel and mutters that he’s having a swim and then he gives the ocean what it wants. 

He gets in deep too quick. The undertow’s gentle but his body’s still liquored long night stiff and the ocean wants him bad enough to slip under his feet and pull him down. He opens his eyes underwater and the salt sting reminds him this isn’t a romance he ought to pursue. The sun’s still bright even through wavering blue and his stomach hurts, lungs starting to scream and he pushes up, pushes through before panic quite sets in. 

But panic’s waiting for him on the surface, Ashton’s eyes wide and scared, his big hand around Calum’s arm dragging him closer to shore, catching him when he stumbles. Maybe Calum had stayed down for too long because he’s dizzier than he should be, the sun blinding, Ashton all glossy wet and close. “I thought you were drowning,” Ashton says, his voice high, and Calum just, he lets himself be taken back to shore, Ashton’s arm around his shoulders, guiding him back to his towel laid out for him. 

“Wasn’t even struggling, though,” Calum says, and Ashton’s hand lingers on his back, rubs there like he’s making sure Calum’s real.

“But you don’t, that’s the thing,” Ashton tells him, pulls him down, his hand in the middle of Calum’s chest pushing when Calum doesn’t immediately lie down. “It’s like, you don’t struggle when you’re drowning. You just sink under.”

Calum’s voice is a salted husk of a thing when he says, “Thanks for the rescue, then,” and it fades to nothing at all when Ashton reaches for and holds his hand.

-

Behind his eyelids the light’s still blinding, red summer sun insistent so he has to cover his eyes with his forearm. The sun’s cooking him, he can feel it even through sunscreen, same as he can feel the strain in his back and thighs left over from the long night. He can’t feel Ashton’s mouth on his neck but he knows it was there, can’t hear Ashton saying his name, low and breathless, but he knows that happened too. It’s blurry and he wishes it wasn’t. It happened and he wishes it hadn’t. He wants it again and he wishes he didn’t.

He listens to the seabirds cry out over head and he offers himself up to the sun gods as a sacrifice, hopes they’ll roast him right up. He’ll lie there until the tide comes in if the sun doesn’t want him, let the eager ocean claim him so he at least knows his body’s wanted. That he’s wanted. 

He digs his fingers into the hot sand, as deep as they’ll go until he touches the low damp layer of it and wishes he was like that, that digging in deeper ended in cold sand instead of stupid tender vulnerable bits. He knows he probably makes a stupid face when he comes, and hopes that Ashton didn’t notice.

-

Ashton comes back from his swim and as his footsteps approach Calum thinks about him thudding down to his knees, crawling over Calum’s body and lowering himself down, kissing Calum’s mouth and his jaw and throat, sucking bruises across his collarbones like graffiti marking where he’s been, making art of Calum. Making him beautiful.

But, “We should get going,” Ashton says instead, so Calum nods, and drags himself up, and follows Ashton back to the car and the parking lot pavement burns his feet and the words he can’t say burn his throat and the sun beats down on his shoulders like it wants to crack his body open, and. He reaches out, sees it happening like watching from outside himself in a dream, his hand curving around Ashton’s hip, fingertips finding his hipbone and digging in, forcing Ashton around so his ass hits the car door and he makes a startled noise, car keys jingling in his hand and eyes wide when Calum stares at him. 

If Ashton were a girl he’d ask, move in close and wait for her, but Ashton’s not a fucking girl and that’s the problem, and it’s stupid that it’s a problem and stupid that there’s no solution. Maybe it’ll make things worse or maybe Ashton will kiss him back (maybe both) but maybes never got Calum much of anywhere. He touches the hot skin of Ashton’s waist and Ashton parts his lips and Calum leans in. 

It should be something taken, a stolen kiss, but instead Ashton accepts it like a gift, kisses Calum back. Their chests are still bare and that’s different from last night, from the mostly-dressed fumbles with jeans unzipped and hands reached in. It feels closer, realer in the afternoon’s fierce light, the ocean crashing harshly on the shore and the slow rumble of cars in the lot. A breeze brushes by and Calum feels it on his flushed cheekbones, opens his mouth and licks at Ashton’s tongue, tastes seawater again like he’s drowning and it’s fine. It’s good. Calum will drown on dry land for this, for Ash. 

They kiss until Calum’s hands have moved to Ashton’s cheeks and they need to break for breath, hot foreheads pressed together. “We can’t, like,” Ashton starts, but his script ends there and he seems lost for improv, the cold metal of his car keys digging in where his hand’s fisted at the base of Calum’s spine. 

“I know,” Calum says, squinting in the bright. 

“So,” says Ashton, not letting go of him, “let’s go back to my house.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know,” Ashton says. He kicks at Calum’s foot. “We can take a nap and sleep off these hangovers. At least there I don’t have to worry about you drowning.”

“No, I guess not,” Calum agrees, and when Ashton opens up the car and pushes him in, his hand warm on Calum’s shoulder, thumb brushing his collarbone, Calum doesn’t even think to struggle.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments wildly appreciated. If you'd like to reblog on Tumblr, [please do so here](http://tmblr.co/Ztp4ay12fa8QO). :)


End file.
